2015 Volume 34, Issue 4 29
Contents
Editorial
Reflections
Teaching & learning
Research
Curriculum support
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Resource reviews
as a key component of the general
capability Personal and social capability.
To give an example of the desirability
of collaborative skills as a key attribute
for employees of the future, SpaceX,
the private company that contracts
to send rockets to the international
space station and has plans to colonise
Mars, actively recruits people who
ooze passion, can work well as part of
a team, and have real-world experience
(Vance, 2015).
There are many approaches to
collaborative learning and the most
productive discussions occur when
students are explicitly taught skills for
effective collaboration. When explicit
instruction does not occur, workload
and responsibility can be unevenly
distributed, and a feeling of unfairness
may develop in those students who feel
they have carried the load.
Creating authentic learning
Authentic collaborative learning takes
place when all group members do
meaningful work that is important to
the group’s success. This means that
the teacher needs to consider individual
roles in each group. Roles will vary
depending on the abilities and interests
of group members and the nature of the
task. If a task is to answer a discussion
question, preferably an unGoogleable
one, the roles may be defined as:
• starter
• arguer
• supporter
• questioner
• challenger
• timer (Gu, Shaoa, Guoa and Limb,
2015).
Ifataskistomakeaproductsuchasa
website, the roles may include writers,
multimedia producers and graphic
designers. Roles may change as the task
unfolds, as illustrated in the table below.
The task itself is a vital part of making
collaborative learning effective. It
should be real-world, relevant and
intellectually rigorous. This doesn’t
mean that the task should overwhelm
students. One of teachers’ great skills is
to pose questions that are in the zone
of proximal development, or, pitched at
an achievable level but just out of the
comfort zone, and then scaffold for
learners the path they could take to get
there. Examples of such questions may
include:
Kindy’s sandbox is empty – how can we
get it refilled?
Team member
Project roles
Research
task
Video
Website
John
Checker, quality
assurance
Topic 1
Props and
sets
Main writer
Batool
Recorder, note taker,
record keeping
Topic 2
Script
writer
Second
writer,
Google
Sites expert
Courtney
Leader, timekeeper
Topic 3
Video
Editing
Graphic
designer
Sanjeet
Spokesperson,
correspondence
Topic 4
Camera
and sound
Multimedia
Figure 1: Roles that may be allocated to group members at different phases of a task.
Year 4 students are nervous about
moving into Year 5 next year – what can
we do to improve things for them?
Better still, some teachers are able to
empower students to pose their own
questions – collaboratively of course.
21st century learning design
This term, shortened to 21CLD, refers
to a framework that can be used to
determine whether 21st century learning
is really happening in an activity or
lesson sequence. The framework has six
elements:
• collaboration
• knowledge construction
• self-regulation
• real-world innovation and problem-
solving
• use of information and
communication technologies (ICTs) in
learning
• skilled communication.
While there are obvious links between
these elements and a list of 21st
century skills, this article will focus on
collaboration.
One way to determine whether
collaborative learning is really
happening in a learning activity is
to score it using a rubric, which